"The truth about the health effects of low level radiation are beginning to appear in the main stream of public media. I am not sure when the segment in the video above actually ran on ABC, but it has been available on the web for more than a year. As you can see if you watch it, there are excerpts from other stories that also should have received wide distribution that also help people to understand that a little radiation is most likely harmless and might even be good for you.

I am encouraged by the fact that this truth is getting out. As the video clearly demonstrates, we have several examples around the world where there were scary and often repeated predictions of massive effects from certain well publicized events, but the long term studies after the fact have show just how wrong those predictions have been. There is a quote that often repeats in my brain that seems to apply here.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. Abraham Lincoln, (attributed) 16th president of US (1809 - 1865)"

Why is the subject line of this post in quotes? IMO countering evangelism with more evangelism is never a good idea, and this article is not innocent when it appropriates Abe Lincoln quotes in support of nuclear power, or puts forth specious arguments about the health benefits of radiation (see video). I'm also mildly pissed that they made me agree on a few points with the Keith Olbermann of the Right, John Stossel.

2. The FDA was created in part to regulate (i.e. ban) radioactive quack medical cures.

Edited on Tue Jan-04-11 02:29 PM by Fledermaus

Byers was the founder of the A.M. Byers Company, one of the world's largest steel companies. In 1928, the Pittsburgh industrialist and one-time U.S. amateur golf champion (1906) injured himself on a party train following a Harvard-Yale football game. At the recommendation of his doctor, he began drinking Radithor, and he continued to do so long after the injury healed - he averaged three bottles a day for two years. Byers stopped consuming Radithor in 1930 when his teeth started falling out and holes appeared in his skull. Perhaps more than anything else, his death in 1932 alerted the public, and much of the medical profession, of the harmful effects of "mild" radium therapy.For additional details, see "The Great Radium Scandal" by Roger Macklis in the August 1993 issue of Scientific American.

Quoting a UP press release from April 2, 1932: "Dr. C.C. Moyar, Pittsburg physician who prescribed "radithor" for Eben Byers, who died Thursday in New York City, denied today that "more than 100 patients" are suffering from radium poisoning. Dr. Moyar said Byers died from a combination of blood diseases which had induced gout. Dr. Moyar said: "The statement of a New York physiotherapist to the effect 100 patients of a Pittsburg physiotherapist were suffering from radium poisoning was an absolute lie. I am the physiotherapist referred to. I never had more than a dozen patients on radium water at any one time. I never had a death among my patients from radium treatment . . . I have taken as much or more radium water of the same kind Mr. Byers took and I am 51 years old, active and healthy."

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